Abdullah discusses how the two of them have “become very intimate with the spirits we call on regularly,” and Cullors talks about how using a hashtag for BLM is “almost resurrecting a spirit so that it can work through us.”
Cullors then explains how the hashtags such as #SayHerName and #BLM are a means to honor the dead and invoke them.
Hashtags for us are way more than a hashtag,” Cullors says.
“It is literally almost resurrecting a spirit so that it can work through us so that we can get the work that we need to get done.”
Seeing it is mostly black africans descendents who came to the americas that are involved in Voodoo, that fits them in BLM.
Sad and BAD for them to be demonized. They think it is good or ancestor
spirits.
But, what makes Vodou so interesting is that it’s this living relationship between the living and the dead. So, the living give birth to the spirits. The spirits can be invoked from beneath the Great Water, responding to the rhythm of the dance to momentarily displace the soul of the living, so that for that brief shining moment, the acolyte becomes the god. That’s why the Vodouists like to say that “You white people go to church and speak about God. We dance in the temple and become God.” And because you are possessed, you are taken by the spirit — how can you be harmed? So you see these astonishing demonstrations: Vodou acolytes in a state of trance handling burning embers with impunity, a rather astonishing demonstration of the ability of the mind to affect the body that bears it when catalyzed in the state of extreme excitation.
— Wade Davis, Author of The Serpent and the Rainbow